Хahar 🤔
Xahar
Atlas Legend
Posts: 41,708
Political Matrix
E: -6.77, S: 0.61
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« on: November 01, 2016, 12:44:24 AM » |
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The present situation in which Atlasia's electoral official has conspired to steal an election to grant himself the vice presidency is a travesty, but if nothing else it has generated a great deal of interest in matters of Atlasia. Judging by the uproar and the amount of debate going on regarding this Atlasian election, one would think that interest and participation in Atlasian government was higher than ever.
And yet this could not be farther from the case! Atlasia has been plagued constantly by problems with activity; for a very long time, there have been too many elective offices for not enough interested people to guarantee entertaining and competitive elections at all levels. This, at least, is universally acknowledged, and the new constitution was an attempt to fix that. It has not worked at all.
As we speak, there is legislation pending to reduce the number of seats in the House from nine to seven; opponents of that legislation have pointed out the presence of eleven candidates for nine seats in the most recent election, reasoning that if every seat isn't uncontested then that's the best that we can reasonably do. In the Fremont Region, the last election for Assembly had one candidate for three seats. Of the three candidates elected in that election (two, of course, being write-ins), two have left their offices, leaving them to be filled by appointment. The Governor of the region has also since left office, causing his replacement to be confirmed in an uncontested election. This is supposed to be an election game; we're all here on the Atlas Forum because we love elections. Where are the elections?
Some people have recognized this miasma and tried to fix it. Scott, notably, proposed the creation of a Reform Party based around a commitment to activity. This is an admirable and commendable goal. Unfortunately, Scott's approach is doomed to fail because it does not address the roots of the activity problem, which are structural.
The problem of inactivity plagues electoral offices, particularly regional offices, because when excited new posters get elected to office, they soon discover it's not all that it's cracked up to be and lose interest. Alternately, when there aren't enough new posters for that to happen, old posters get thrust back into office despite lacking interest, and so they are inactive also. The reason for this rampant inactivity is that, as it turns out, there's nothing to do in government in Atlasia.
Before you protest, think about it. When Atlasia agreed to reboot its entire legislative history, wiping away over a decade of legislation, it conceded that nothing that happened over that time was of any real consequence. What happens when everything is accomplished again, as it was then? Will Atlasia wipe the slate clean again so that it can legalize marijuana a third time? Government in Atlasia is tedious work, arguing over bills of no real consequence that motivate nobody, which is why so many people stay away. We have long since reached a point where, far from augmenting elections by giving them stakes, fantasy government actually impedes elections by dissuading candidates from running lest they win. The purpose of the Atlas Forum Movement is to offer an alternative, so that there can actually be exciting and competitive elections for everyone. This is, after all, an election simulation.
The Atlas Forum Movement is inspired by Boss Tweed's campaign for president several years ago, which was and remains the presidential campaign most honestly interested in making Atlasia work that I have ever seen. In that campaign, Tweed identified the fundamental issue facing Atlasia: its disconnection from the Atlas Forum. Instead of dealing with problems of real consequence to the forum and its posters, Tweed noted, the Atlasian government spent all its time dealing with matters of no interest except to itself, completely ignoring what was going on in the forum. This was a perversion of the original intent of Atlasia, which was to serve as an election simulator for the whole Atlas Forum community, to determine a president of the whole Atlas Forum and not just of a fake country. Nothing has changed since.
If anything, things have gotten worse. Think back to the great schism of last year, when a large portion of the forum split off to go to a different site amidst contentious debate over the future of the site. The Senate of Atlasia could have been a place to debate this momentous issue for the long-term health of the forum; the President of Atlasia could have provided leadership. Where were they? They were completely absent, because Atlasia is irrelevant to the forum at large. It's two boards on the very bottom of the front page that most people don't even think to look at except when they get a PM to vote, because nothing that gets discussed is really of genuine consequence to anyone.
The goal of the Atlas Forum movement is to make Atlasia once again part of the Atlas Forum as a whole. Instead of debating the abolition of a fantasy EPA, the Atlas Forum Movement proposes that Atlasia instead deal with real issues: both issues happening in the real world and issues for this website. The problems that plague Atlasia will never be fixed with mere cosmetic changes, with increased activity requirements, with a new constitution now and then. What Atlasia requires is reorientation, and I encourage people of all ideologies to join me in the realization of that goal.
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